Читать книгу The Dawn of Modern Medicine онлайн

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If a grown-up man were gravely and seriously to assert to the world that two and two make five, the world would be inclined to look upon him as doubtfully rational, inasmuch as he defied the principles of common sense. And when other grown-up men tell the world that they can cure this or that disease with a billionth or decillionth of a grain of this or that common and probably inert drug, they express an opinion perhaps even more intensely and directly absurd than the doctrine of two and two making five; but they do not equally see through the absurdity and impossibility of the more complicated, but equally ridiculous idea, of the billionth or decillionth of a grain of oyster-shell, or chamomile, or belladonna, or the like, having any possible effect whatever upon the economy, for, resting contented with the mere name, they never once think or dream of what in reality a billionth or a decillionth amounts to.... For it is a sum the mere figures of which can scarcely give us any conception of its infinitesimal amount, viz., 1 followed by sixty ciphers.... Surely men holding such fantastical doctrines, are not men mentally fit to be members of such a Society as this.